Posted by Mary_Bowers on October 21, 2004, at 11:37:43
In reply to Leave me out of your discussion » Mary_Bowers, posted by partlycloudy on October 21, 2004, at 7:09:44
As I appreciate the body of rules Robert Hsiung has attempted to construct, a person can ask that others don't expressly direct messages to them. I have found no record of a provision that others don't write about them, but it might be reasonable to conclude the "not to me" request extends to "not about me."
If there is a provision that allows others to ask that somebody not write about them, then it would seem reasonable to expect the provision cuts both ways. If a person asks me not to talk about them in posts here, it seems part of the agreement would be that the requesting party cease any discussion, directly or implicitly, about the other. If it doesn't it would be easy enough for a person to counter-request that the one asking to be excluded from discussion also refrain from discussing the person they don't want discussing them. However, it would be impractical in the context of this or any open discussion site to presume a person has an exclusive right to a topic, which is to say, if a person raises a subject, any "member" in good standing may continue to discuss that subject. As far as I know, nobody may say "I talked about that first, so now you can't talk about it."
Beyond the context of this site, no person enjoys any reasonable expecation of privacy for what they have posted here except general copyright provisions and the technical measures intended to afford anonymity. If I or anyone else chose to work within fair use principles to review on another web site, in a published book or in a broadcast program particular posts, posters or personal problems disclosed by particular posters, there is nothing a person can do to prevent it. Hsiung might decide to consider additional arbitrary rules, such as a requirement that members swear an AA-style promise of secrecy concerning things they have read on Psychobabble, but that would probably be impractical; members would enjoy less opportunity to discuss Psychobabble in real life than would any other person, if a member wanted to retain their good standing. Such a rule could prohibit a husband, for example from discussing with his wife a scenario he read on psychobabble. The likely result would be that members who discuss details of the site in other venues would no longer advise other members here of their activities elsewhere in relation to the site. Within the context of this site, such a rule would give members an unusual degree of control over the behavior of members who participate in other venues. It would potentially limit discussion of other psych sites - for example if I mention to another site that I prefer that site to psychobabble (or visa-versa), I would have offended the theoretical rule about discussing psychobabble off-site.
Robert Hsiung has provided his clients at Psychobabble publishing tools, and has composed some language advising them of the non-private nature of the venue in which he is inviting publication, but may not have effectively impressed on participants the extent to which they sacrifice their privacy by publishing to a public readership.
For my part, unless I have expressly assured another person a degree of secrecy, I retain full rights to discuss freely any conversation of which I have been a part, or which was conducted in my presence with no reasonable expectation of privacy. These are the standards adopted during two centuries of jurisprudence in a society that is represented as the model of civil society around the world. However, although I enjoy a civil right to do so, I don't believe I have stated an intent to publish information about particular posters elsewhere.
I have suggested several venues that might be accessible to me, but I have reached no conclusions as to how I will eventually discuss technical analysis of this site. I can suggest that our primary goal at this point is to develop protocols - ways of measuring behavior at this site - that can be applied to any portion of the opus and discover the same result, within a reasonable margin of error. I am advising my peers at psychobabble the only thing Robert Hsiung could do to stop somebody who chose to review the site and its contents under fair use principles of copyright law would be to limit their participation in this site, which probably wouldn't stop CNN or Fox or anyone else who was intent on reporting their findings about this site.
poster:Mary_Bowers
thread:404567
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20041012/msgs/405447.html